Biz Beat Blog

It’s not Animal House. It’s Dallas startup house.

More startups from across the country travel to Dallas to join accelerator Tech Wildcatters’ 12-week program annually.

These out-of-town entrepreneurs need to find temporary housing in the city, which is not an easy or affordable feat.

Now, they don’t have to look far for lodging.

Tech Wildcatters is opening a startup house in Uptown, where startups and entrepreneurs can rent fully furnished rooms.

Participants in the accelerator’s international startup exchange program GlobeStart are expected to be the startup house’s inaugural tenants. GlobeStart brings startups from abroad to Dallas, Silicon Valley and Las Vegas for business development, investor meetings and networking. In its third year, GlobeStart startups will stay in the new house for a week in early February.

Tech Wildcatters co-founder Gabriella Draney said the idea came together because there was a need and one of the program’s investor and mentor had a house near its Uptown headquarters that was empty.

Thus the startup house was born.

Besides lodging for its own programs, Draney sees the house serving a greater purpose.

“The plan is to make it available to traveling startup people,” she said. “This is not just for Tech Wildcatters and for GlobeStart. It’s for the startup community.”

The 2,800-square-foot house has three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. It will be fully furnished with a kitchen and washer and dryer. The house will be outfitted with bunk beds and can accommodate 14 people, said Raquel Vincent, a content manager at Tech Wildcatters who’s managing the startup house.

Rent is $600 month, which includes utilities and Internet access. For shorter stays, rent is $30 a night.

“We’re trying to make it feel as much like a home and a creative space,” Vincent said.

Tech Wildcatters plans to organize monthly dinners, social events and other activity for residents as well as the community, Vincent said.

Draney said she hopes access to housing for startups in Tech Wildcatters or its sister program Health Wildcatters as well as other accelerators in town will lesson the burden of participants.

“Hopefully, it will take a lot of stresses from the founders’ mind because it’s not needed,” she said.

Soon-to-be-furnished living room at TW's startup house

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